Editorial | Nursing home bill still oinks

Your General Assembly really can get something done when it wants to - despite all the handwringing about how some issues (taxes) are too hard to accomplish in the current "short" legislative session.

Just this week a bill to shield the nursing home industry from lawsuits shot out of the Kentucky Senate in a single day like a greased pig. Which it is, really, but more about that later.

In an astonishing display, Senate Republicans on Wednesday:

? Whipped out a new, basically unchanged version of Senate Bill 9 sponsored by state Sen. Julie Denton, a Louisville Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

? Through some legislative sleight-of-hand, stripped off a bunch of pesky amendments that would have increased protections for nursing home residents and oversight of the industry.

? Held a 10-minute special meeting of the committee where it overrode objections and passed the new bill along party lines.

? Sent it straight back to the Senate where it promptly appeared on the agenda and was passed in the same day.

It was a breathtaking display of speed in a legislature known for procrastination, gridlock and delay.

Of course it helped that when the Senate got ready to debate SB 9, the sponsor, Ms. Denton, refused to answer any questions when queried by Sen. Ray Jones, a Pikeville Democrat who has ripped the bill as a way to block elderly, helpless people who suffer abuse and neglect in nursing homes from seeking justice in court.

The bill would create a review panel of three physicians who would decide whether standards of care were violated before an alleged victim could file a lawsuit against a nursing home.

Under legislative protocol, lawmakers frequently request the sponsor of a bill "yield to a question," a routine request almost always granted and one which Mr. Jones used Wednesday to ask Ms. Denton about her bill.

"No," she replied curtly.

After more Democrats rose to criticize the bill, Ms. Denton used a manuever to cut off debate and require a vote on SB 9, which passed 23-12 on party lines.

Earlier in the day her committee did give two opponents of SB 9 a chance to speak in an apparent effort to repair damage from last week when the committee approved the bill after hearing only from nursing home industry advocates.

But Ms. Denton couldn't be there, explaining she had to leave for another committee.

Too bad. Had she stayed she would have heard Wanda Delaplane describe how her late father suffered for hours, screaming from abdominal pain from a bowel obstruction before he died in a Frankfort nursing home in2002.

Afterward, Ms. Delaplane testified, the nursing home falsified records and instructed employees to lie about her father's care as part of an elaborate cover-up. A medical review panel would have been useless, she said, because the panel's job is to review records which in her father's case had been destroyed or falsified.

It took several years of extensive litigation before the family dug out the truth of her father's agonizing and needless death, she said. A Franklin Circuit jury agreed and awarded the family $20 million, an amount later reduced through a settlement after an appeal.

The Senate on Wednesday did more than add lipstick to SB 9 - it tried to give this pig a full-scale makeover.

But it still oinks and we hope the House hears it when it reaches that chamber.

Louisville, Kentucky • Southern Indiana

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Editorial | Nursing home bill still oinks

People of Kentucky, take note. Your General Assembly really can get something done when it wants to ? despite all the handwringing about how some issues (taxes) are too hard to accomplish in the